The first two centuries of the Celtic Church were the most
glorious period in the history of Iona. “In later years”, says Rait, “(the
Church) did not escape the inevitable deterioration, and it had its
reformers. . . . After the time of Columba, it seems to have had little
influence in national affairs, but the persistence of its individual life
indicates that it possessed a real hold upon the people of Scotland.” Its
best work was done as a missionary church; later, as civilization advanced,
and the need of the times tended towards an organized religion, it was found
lacking, and went down almost without resistance before the disciplined
forces of Rome.

Hardly were its internal troubles over than a new danger
threatened the Iona community from without. A series of invasions by Danish
pirates is recorded: In 797, the island was pillaged; in 801-2, the
monastery was burned to the ground; and in 806, Iona for the first time
suffered “red martyrdom”, in the slaughter of sixty-eight monks,
traditionally at Martyrs’ Bay. The afflicted monastery could no longer
continue the oversight of the Church, and in 814, the primacy was
transferred temporarily to Kells, in Ireland. The Iona monks, however, clung
to their island, and bravely proceeded to build a new monastery, this time
of stone, and on a better site, where the Cathedral now stands. In 825,
there was a second Danish massacre, the heathen bursting into the church one
dark winter morning, during the celebration of Mass, and cutting down
Blathmac, the acting superior, together with several of his monks. This is
commemorated as the Passion of St. Blathmac and the Martyrs of Iona.

The primacy did not go back to Iona, but passed to Dunkeld,
where Constantine, King of Picts, had erected a monastery far from the
danger zone. Thence it passed to Abernethy, and finally, in 908, to St.
Andrews. In Iona the office of Abbot was succeeded by that of Coarb of
Columkill (Heir of Columba), held usually by the abbot of one of the greater
Irish monasteries, who ruled the Iona community from afar. Thenceforward
Iona, like the Celtic Church generally, steadily declined in importance.

Following the turbulent ninth century, during which the
Danish pirates remained the scourge of the Western Isles, there came a long
period of relative peace, and henceforth there are many blanks in the
history of Iona. The Danes were succeeded by the Norse Vikings, but these
were a less formidable foe, and not aggressive towards the monastery. (The
Danes, it may be said in fairness, are believed to have been incited to
animosity against the Church because of the slaughter of their pagan kinsmen
in North Germany by Charlemagne in the name of Christianity.)

In 980, a notable pilgrim, Anlaf, King of the Danes of
Dublin, came to Iona after his defeat by the Irish, and spent his last days
there in penance and good works. (Two centuries earlier, Neill Frassach,
King of Ireland, and Artgal, King of Connaught, had died in Iona, having
relinquished their thrones for the monastic life.) Six years later, the
Danes once more descended on the island, and slaughtered the Abbot and
fifteen monks, traditionally on the White Sands.

During the rest of the Celtic Church period, the possession
of the Western Isles fluctuated between Scotland and Norway. In 1097, King
Magnus of Norway (called Magnus Barelegs because of his adoption of the kilt
during his long operations in the Hebrides), on a triumphal tour of his new
territories, anchored his war-galleys in the Sound of Mull, and came ashore
to do homage to the Isle of Columba.

Nothing more is heard of Iona for sixty-five years, when a
notice appears in the Annals of Ulster of a deputation to Ireland in 1164,
at which period the island was temporarily in Scottish possession.

In the meantime, Church affairs in Scotland had been
practically revolutionized, mainly because of the marriage of Malcolm
Canmore, son of Duncan, and successor to Macbeth on the Scottish throne,
with Margaret, a Saxon princess, who, with her family, had taken refuge in
Scotland after the Norman Conquest. [This marriage, indeed, marks the fall
of Celtic and the rise of Anglian supremacy in Scotland, and the
supersession at Court of the Gaelic tongue by “Scottis” or Scots, derived
from the Anglian settlers in the Lothians.] Margaret, a thorough Saxon and
devout member of the Roman Church, was genuinely distressed to find in the
land of her adoption errors in the observance of Lent, neglect of the Sunday
holy day, and “Masses in I know not what barbarous rite”. A woman of great
piety and zeal, she “restored the monastery of Hy, which Columba, the
servant of Christ, had erected in the time of Brude, son of Meilcon, King of
Picts. It had fallen into ruin in the storms of war and the lapse of ages,
but the faithful queen rebuilt and restored it, and gave the monks an
endowment for the performance of the Lord’s work ” (Ordericus Vitalis).

But, though generous to Iona, Margaret set herself
wholeheartedly to the task of Latinizing the Scottish Church. After a Celtic
reaction, this policy was continued by her third son, David I, who abolished
the Celtic liturgy, organized regular dioceses administered by bishops and
parish priests, and replaced the Celtic monks and Culdees by Benedictine
monks and Augus-tinian canons. By the end of his reign, practically all the
mediaeval sees had been founded.

The Culdees mentioned above were an order instituted in
Dublin by St. Maelruain in 787A The name is derived from the Celtic Cele
De> the servant of God. They were hermits, leading a life of prayer and
contemplation, and, in the ninth century, their cells became scattered over
Scotland as widely as the Celtic monasteries. In later days, the Culdees
fell away in many places from the old strict rules, and this served as an
excuse for their suppression in the reform of the Scottish Church in the
twelfth century.

Already, in 1093, succession in the old Celtic Church had
come to an end, and though the religious life of Iona and the pilgrimages
thither continued, a general decay of the Church was discernible. The
twelfth century saw the complete Latinization of the National Church. Iona,
owing to her isolated position, escaped the longest, but, early in the
thirteenth century, in the reign of William the Lion, Reginald, son and heir
of the great Somerled, Lord of the Isles, established on the island a
monastery of Benedictines, and, shortly afterwards, a community of nuns of
the same order, in honour of God and St. Columkill.

In the last notice of Iona in the Irish Annals, it is related
that in 1204 a monastery was erected in the middle of the island by Cellach
(presumably the first Abbot of the Benedictine monastery) without any right,
and in dishonour of the community On hearing of the calamity that had
befallen the sacred isle, a party of incensed Derry men came over and pulled
down the building. This seems to be an account, from the Irish point of
view, of the appearance of the Benedictine community on Iona. After a tenure
of approximately six and a half centuries, the Family of Hy, now far
decayed, was ousted from its island sanctuary, and its remaining lands and
churches were handed over to the usurpers. Regarding the fate of the monks,
nothing is known.

In the eleventh century Iona had passed into the Diocese of
Man and the Isles, which had been created by the Norwegian conquerors. In
1154, the See was put under the Archbishop of Trondjem, in Norway, and
remained there until 1266, when, following the defeat of Haco of Norway at
Largs, the Hebrides were finally ceded to Scotland. Henceforth, Iona did
homage to Dunkeld, once more the primatial See of Scotland.

The Benedictine occupation of Iona was uneventful. In 1203
Pope Innocent III's formal approval of the foundation of Iona Abbey was
recorded in a letter of which a copy is preserved in the Vatican. In 1498,
the Holy See was asked to erect the Abbacy into the Bishopric of the Isles,
and, by 1506, this was accomplished.

The light of Iona burned dimly, but steadily, through these
dark and turbulent centuries, and, save for an incursion by Norwegian
pirates in 1240, appears to have remained unscathed in the midst of “roving
clans and savage barbarians ”.

In 1549, Donald Monro, Dean of the Isles, visited the island,
and from him we have a picture of Iona twelve years before the Reformation,
when the community was swept into exile. “Within this ile”, he writes,
“there is a monastery of mounckes, and ane uther of nuns, with a
paroche-kirke, and sundrie uther chapells, dotat of auld by the Kings of
Scotland and by Clandonald of the iyles.”

Many precious manuscripts and books are said to have been
carried off by the dispersed monks to the Scots monastery at Ratisbon and
the Scots colleges at Douay and Rome, but none of these has been identified.

There is no evidence that any systematic attempt to destroy
the buildings was made at the time of the Reformation in 1560, when the
island and the lands formerly belonging to the monastery passed into the
hands of Maclean of Duart.

In 1609, Andrew Knox, who was made Bishop of the Isles in the
temporary episcopate established a year later, held a convention of several
chiefs of the Highlands and islands, on Iona. Here the “Statutes of
Icolmkill” were drawn up and subscribed, the chiefs pledging themselves to
repair the churches throughout their territories, to provide parish
ministers, to promote the observance of the Sabbath day, and to endeavour to
put a stop to certain undesirable practices which were then prevalent.

In 1617, the Abbey of Iona was annexed to the Bishopric of
the Isles. Eighteen years later, Charles I wrote to Maclean of Duart asking
him to restore the Island of Icolmkill to the Bishop, and in the same year
ordered the Lords of the Exchequer to pay to the Bishop the sum of £400 for
the restoration of the Cathedral. This grant was evidently never made,
owing, doubtless, to the political troubles of the time; for when
Sacheverell, Governor of Man, visited Iona in 1688, the buildings were in
ruins. “Though they have no minister,” he tells us, “they constantly
assemble in the great church on Sundays, wrhere they spend most of the day
in private devotions.”

In 1693, Iona passed from the Macleans to the Campbells, and
it still remains in the hands of their chief, the Duke of Argyll.

Some years ago the Cathedral was presented by the then Duke
to the Established Church of Scotland, whose approaching union with the
United Free Church will once more establish a great National Church.

The island life continues its even tenor. The nettle still
“sheds her snows above kings’ heads”, and the thistle “waves where bishops’
mitres stood”, but the “long sleep” which fell upon the island is now at an
end, and there is a general stirring. The Cathedral itself is once more a
place of worship, and services are also held regularly in the little Free
(now U.F.) Church. In 1894, an Episcopal chapel wras consecrated in the
newly built “St. Columba’s House”—known locally as the Bishop’s House—which
was used for a time as a house of retreat for clergy of that body. An island
library, founded a century ago, and continually added to, is housed in the
village. Some years ago a little hand-press was started, and brought out
some old Gaelic books and prints. In a studio in the village, the old Celtic
designs in which the island is so rich are reproduced in beautiful articles
of wood and brass and other materials; and the Iona silver jewellery will
make an appeal to all lovers of beautiful ornament.

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